


In Which We Were Broken

by SpaceWall



Series: Unbreakable Bonds [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Families of Choice, Family Feels, First Meetings, Fourth Age, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Grief/Mourning, Hugs, Loneliness, Loss of Parent(s), Regret, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 18:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15757248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWall/pseuds/SpaceWall
Summary: There are three people in Valinor who have lost a parent and a child both, for ever. This is the story of two of them.OrElrond and Fëanor both desperately need a hug, and Maedhros isn’t there.





	In Which We Were Broken

**Author's Note:**

> I could basically have tagged Maedhros as a third character in this story, because despite the fact that he is not present and does not say a word, his absence is felt acutely. This is not a happy story, but it is not a sad story either. It is. If you’re more familiar with my Dawn work, this is not like that in the cheerful bits, this is like that in the sad/angry bits where everybody cries.
> 
> This story was born while talking to FactorialRabbits, who gets partial credit and also partial blame.

Elrond only had to knock once before the door swung open. Curufinwë Fëanáro who watched him, eagle-eyed, from inside, was shorter than he had expected. Shorter than Elrond himself, in fact. But, well, it was not Fëanor who he had really been thinking of when he imagined the height anyways. Otherwise, he was as Elrond had expected. He resembled Celebrimbor a great deal, long ebony hair falling over a lean but muscular body and framing a sharp face. 

“May I come in?” Elrond asked, feeling rather like a child who had been caught behaving badly.

Fëanor stepped out of the doorway, and let Elrond pass. “What have you come to ask of me, Peredhel? What retribution do you demand?”

Elrond had only three things he wanted, in all the world and each was something Fëanor could not give him. He wanted his brother, dead for millennia. He wanted his daughter, dead for centuries. He wanted his father, cast from this world for something that was not his fault.

“Retribution?” Elrond asked, as he walked past Fëanor and into the house. It was not as spacious as he would have expected, but then, the once-king lived alone. His wife Nerdanel had long forsaken him. What need had he for space? 

Fëanor shrugged. “For Sirion, for your parents, for your childhood. For the rings of power. For some other slight of my house that nobody ever heard about.”

Elrond gave him what he hoped was a look that was both baffled and unimpressed. “Do people really come to you to demand retribution?”

“Constantly. I usually grant them some kind of gift or favour instead. After all, what else am I supposed to do? I have already apologized to the lot of them. Námo, in his infinite wisdom, feels that I am cured enough of my hatred and forgiven enough by those I have slain. But, evidently not enough for them to stop showing up at my door to tell me all the horrible things my family has done, as if perhaps by badgering me, we will finally have suffered enough for our sins.”

“Oh,” Elrond muttered, and took the seat Fëanor offered him. There was space for nine people exactly in Fëanor’s living room. Three on both sofas, and one in each of three chairs. The seat Elrond had been offered was the smallest of the three chairs, and he felt small and out of place in it. The room was so empty, missing all the people who were supposed to fill it. 

“So, what do you want from me? What can I do to lessen the sorrows inflicted on your family? You, of all who have ever come to me, have by far the most cause to complain. Save perhaps Findaráto, though he complained about something entirely unrelated to the actual grievance he ought to have against my sons.” Fëanor sat in a high-backed chair. It seemed the least comfortable seat in the room, but it suited him

“What,” Elrond demanded, “could I possibly ask for in retribution that would compare to that which you already have lost?”

Fëanor said nothing to this, for a long second. He looked down at his hands, and then up to the painting on the wall above one of the sofas. It was a large thing, and Elrond thought it depicted Tirion and the surrounding landscape in a rather youthful hand. The painting was so old that it seemed the slightest wind might blow it away.

“Nothing,” he whispered, when his words seemed to return to him. “Nothing could ever match that.”

He seemed so unbearably alone. Something in Elrond yearned to reach out to him. 

“So, I ask for nothing. As for the things I want, there is nothing you could give me anyways, unless you can bring dead mortals back to me, or-”

Elrond cut himself off before he could reveal too much too quickly. 

“Or?” Fëanor asked, leaning forward in his seat. 

Elrond looked down at his feet. “It does not matter. The point is, it is beyond your control.”

“So, you ask no retribution and I may grant no favours. Then why, Son of Eärendil, have you come all this way?”

There was a mannish saying about how if one was going to risk a little, they might as well risk a lot. Elrond found that he was forgetting the exact words, but, well, something like ‘in for copper, in for gold’. 

“Because I am not the Son of Eärendil. He may share my blood, but he did not raise me, did not teach me. Did not dry my tears or share my joys. Because I was loved, and loved in turn, those who did raise me, and now I have nothing left of them, and will never see them again.”

He had not wanted to cry in front of Fëanor, but it was impossible to stop the tears. It had been so long since he had allowed himself to speak of them, to mourn them. It had been centuries since he had allowed himself to weep. 

“Do you want tea?” Fëanor asked, and, without waiting for an answer, fled the room. He looked stricken. The pause gave Elrond time to get his crying under control, and to try to dry his eyes on his sleeve.

When Fëanor finally returned, Elrond said, “I’m sorry, I had not meant to cry.”

Fëanor passed him a handkerchief, followed by a cup of tea. “It happens more often than you would think.”

“More than people coming to demand retribution?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up in something like a smile. “Often the same people, actually. They want to tell me their stories, what I did, what my oath made my sons do, to them or their friends or their families or their lovers. Why I owe them.”

Elrond took a careful sip of the tea, it was very hot. “How did you heat this so quickly?”

That turned the quirked mouth into a full smile, with teeth. “I have a lot of free time to dedicate to the scientific pursuits. At the moment, I am working on trying to heat things with electromagnetic fields that- well, you hardly care.”

“Do you ever do anything with all your work?”

“If any of it works, I usually turn it over to Celebrimbor or Arafinwë when they come knocking. Nobody will take it with my name attached, but those two can find other people willing to take credit, or to be assumed to deserve credit.”

Elrond wrapped his hands around the hot teacup. “That is good. That you can get it out there, I mean. It must be frustrating not to be able to work the way you used to.”

Fëanor sighed, and took a sip of his own tea. “Believe it or not, it is almost a relief. Giving it all away means that it gets honest criticism and feedback. I have both of them forward any complaints or problems people have to me, and I fix it, and nobody ever has to know who did it. It is rather freeing.”

Elrond nodded. “That makes sense, I suppose.”

They were silent for a time, Elrond resisting the urge to try and blow on his tea to cool it, while Fëanor sipped as though it wasn’t even hot. Finwions. 

“So,” Fëanor began, when the silence had drawn on long enough, “you’ve come about Kanafinwë and Nelyafinwë.”

They were not the names Elrond would have used, but they belonged to the same people. “Yes.”

“But not for retribution against them.”

“No. No, never that.” Elrond hoped he had been clear about that, to the Valar as well as to Fëanor. “In my mind, it is I who owe them a debt, not the other way around. If it were not for them, I might never have become who I am today. It was from them I learned the lessons that allowed me to become a warrior, and a leader. And a healer, of course. Maglor was the first person who believed I could be a healer, and Maedhros was the first person who made me believe it of myself.”

Fëanor stood, and glided across the room until he was standing so close to the painting he only had to reach out to touch it, and he almost did, fingertips gliding through the air a fraction of an inch from its surface. 

“He always could do that,” Fëanor muttered. “Any of his brothers might say the same. He was the first to make Kanafinwë believe he could write his own music instead of play others’, and to show Tyelkormo that he was a good enough hunter to ride in Oromë’s train.”

Celegorm, the third son of Fëanor, was never seen by the general public, though he lived. It was said that he had been released from Mandos on the condition of his supervision by Oromë, just as Fëanor lived deep in Valinor, where he could be well minded by all the Valar. The general view was that there was a similar agreement about Curufin and Aulë, while the other three were supervised by various members of the extended family.

“Do you see them often?”

Fëanor kept his eyes focused on the painting. “Celebrimbor is my most frequent visitor. He always was kinder than the rest of us deserved. Carnistir makes it up sometimes, for an afternoon, and Pityafinwë and Telufinwë sometimes come for a week or two. Oromë brings Tyelkormo twice a year, like clockwork. I am not permitted to see Curufinwë.”

“I’m sorry.”

Fëanor’s voice was hard. “I have no need for your pity.”

“Well, perhaps I have some need for yours,” Elrond retorted, just to be contrary. 

“Why are you here, not-Son of Eärendil?”

“Because I am so immeasurably tired of not having anyone to talk to about the fact that I love your sons. I love them, and everyone who I could talk to about it would think I was mad for holding them in anything more than contempt.”

“There are other people on this shore that love Nelyafinwë. His brothers, to begin with. Nerdanel. That Findekáno.”

“That’s true, but I think we and my mother may be the only three people on this island who know what it is like to lose both a parent and a child forever, and she certainly does not understand or accept my love for Maedhros and Maglor.”

“You lost-” 

“My daughter, Arwen. She chose a mortal path.” Elrond supposed that Fëanor probably received little news from the rest of society.

“I’m sorry,” Fëanor whispered, his sorrow quite genuine.

“See, and now I have your pity too.”

“I wish I could offer you more than that,” Fëanor muttered, clenching and unclenching his fists. “But they are beyond the help of any elf, now. Kanafinwë must now decide for himself where his path shall lie, I am told, and as for Nelyafinwë, he is gone beyond recovery, I am told.”

Elrond was unable to help himself. “That was not fair or just. He was sick. He needed help, and healers, not to be abandoned in the darkness.”

Fëanor’s fist hit the wall just to the side of the painting. It didn’t break, but it did leave a definitive dent. Elrond jumped, sloshing hot tea over his hands and onto his lap. He cursed, but not as loudly or as rudely as Fëanor did. 

“You think I am ignorant of that?” He demanded. Elrond did not think the anger was for him. “We broke him, Morgoth and I both, and they blame him. They blame all of us for the ways in which we were broken. They blame my sons, and Nolofinwë, for things that I did to them. They blame me for things that I needed help with, and then turn around and are so proud when I admit that I needed help. I always knew I needed help. That was not some revelation. I just never got it. I still do not get it, I just sit in the woods and I am nice and quiet and docile while they torture my son.”

Elrond tried to dry his pants with his handkerchief. “I should have refused to sail without Maglor. They wanted the Ringbearers here, more than they care to admit. I should have refused, and I should have convinced Mithrandir and Galadriel to help me. But I thought the Valar would have a plan. I thought they would care.”

Fëanor looked for a second like he might put his fist all the way through the wall, but instead he fell to the ground and wept. That set Elrond crying too, and he knelt beside Fëanor. They wrapped their arms around each other, though neither was the one the other really wanted.

Elrond stayed the night in Fëanor’s guest room, since it was too late to make the journey back to Tirion that night anyways. They shared dinner- Fëanor was a surprisingly good cook- and spoke long into the night. Elrond told Fëanor more of his relationship with his fathers, and even, hesitantly, of the daughter he had lost. He learned in turn of how Maglor and Maedhros had been as children, and, from an equally hesitant Fëanor, of Finwë and Míriel, as they had been in the years before the sun. 

It was not until he left the next morning that Fëanor asked again, “why did you come to speak to me about this?”

Elrond twisted Vilya back and forth on his finger. “I needed to say it, and you needed to hear that no matter what anyone says, they were never monsters. Not even at the end. And I needed to speak to someone who loved them, of course. It has been a very, very long time.”

Fëanor gave him a fay smile. “Nerdanel would have done, or Findekáno, for Nelyo. I may not like him, but, well, we all know how those two felt about each other.”

Elrond had not meant to bring this up, but, “Nerdanel would not see me. I asked, and was refused. As for Fingon- I remember what it was like trying to talk to my children about their mother, after she sailed. I would not force Fingon, who barely even knows me, to that.”

“You should try again. They both deserve to hear it, and Nerdanel at least would be better at this than I am.”

Elrond reached out to place a tentative hand on his shoulder. “For the record, I think you deserve to hear it too. Maybe everybody does. I’m just not sure that I am ready yet, to speak those truths.”

“Send word to me, if you do.” Fëanor looked resigned to the idea that this would be the closest they would ever come to contact again. 

“Send word, nothing. I will return. Maybe, if you are so insistent he has a place in all this, I will bring Fingon with me.” The look of distaste Fëanor gave at that was enough to make him laugh. “Or perhaps not. But perhaps I will bring my sons, or my wife. Celebrían would, if nothing else, find some of the improvements you’ve made to the kitchen very interesting.”

Elrond was back on his horse before Fëanor called after him, one last time, “why?”

Elrond called in return, over his shoulder, “because, grandfather, nobody deserves to be kept from their family. Not even you.”

He only had to pat the horse gently on the shoulder to drive her into a gallop, and he sped away to the sound of Fëanor’s soft laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Fëanor and Elrond really, badly need a hug, and Námo needs a fucking punch to the fucking face so god damn hard.
> 
> FactorialRabbits wrote an AMAZING fix it sequel and I am living for it!! You can find it in the series this work is now in.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Unbreaking the Circle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15783861) by [FactorialRabbits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FactorialRabbits/pseuds/FactorialRabbits)




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